Marsilius of Padua

Works

• 1324The Defender of the Peace (Defensor pacis)

  Power comes from the “human legislator”, the body of citizens; priests may teach but not coerce, and the papal claim to fullness of power is the chief cause of strife in Italy.

Position

The Defender of the Peace is divided into two discourses. The first, built on Aristotle’s Politics – cited about a hundred times – describes the state as a community that exists for living and living well, and asks what keeps it at peace. Its answer is that the authority to make law lies with the “human legislator”: the whole body of citizens or its “weightier part” (valentior pars). The legislator also institutes the ruling part, which governs by law and can be corrected or removed. Law is defined by its coercive force, and only the legislator can give it. The second discourse applies this to the Church. Priests have the task of teaching and administering the sacraments, but divine law has no coercive force in this world; coercive jurisdiction over clergy and laity belongs to the secular ruler. The papal claim to fullness of power (plenitudo potestatis), Marsilius argued, has no basis in scripture and is the “singular cause” of strife in Italy, and in matters of faith a general council, called by the secular power, stands above the pope. Older scholarship called him a “political Averroist”, because he separated philosophical argument from faith and worked with John of Jandun; the label is now widely doubted. Whether his “legislator” anticipates popular sovereignty or reflects the councils of the Italian city communes is still debated. The book was printed at Basel in 1522, translated into English in 1535 for Thomas Cromwell during Henry VIII’s break with Rome, and placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1559.

Life & context

Marsilius (Marsilio dei Mainardini) was born in Padua between about 1275 and 1280 into a family of notaries and judges. On the advice of the Paduan poet Albertino Mussato he chose medicine rather than law. In Paris he became a master of arts and served as rector of the university from December 1312 to March 1313; he also practised medicine and was close to the Paduan physician Peter of Abano. In Paris he finished The Defender of the Peace on 24 June 1324. When his authorship became known, he and his colleague John of Jandun left Paris, in 1325 or 1326, for the court of Louis of Bavaria, who was in conflict with Pope John XXII. In 1327 the pope declared five propositions from the book heretical and excommunicated both men. Marsilius accompanied Louis to Rome, where Louis was crowned emperor in 1328 without the pope, and served as his vicar in the city. After the retreat from Italy he lived at the court in Munich and wrote shorter political works, among them the Defensor minor (c. 1340). He died in or before 1343.

Further main works

• On the Transfer of the Empire (De translatione imperii)
• The Lesser Defender (Defensor minor, c. 1340)